Mindless Ones

It’s been a long time coming but at 8 o’clock tonight the UK finally gets to see the Season 6 premiere. In an effort to get into the mood, Zomina and I sat down to rewatch the Season 5 finale last night. I was a little worried going in, as the last time I’d seen it I’d come away dissatisfied, in fact the whole season with its proliferation of sci-fi and fantasy trappings, has shaken my faith a little. It has all started to feel a bit too arbitrary, a bit too incoherent. Lost has trod the fine line between enjoyable absurdity and the irredeemably ridiculous since the beginning, but until Season 5 I thought it had always been on the right side of that line, or at least on the right side most of the time.

I suppose at root my concern was about whether anything meaningful could ultimately be said on the back of Lost’s nigh on nonsensical sci-fi dimension, and the more that element was played up the more I worried that the creators would be forced to try to. This might seem strange coming from a fan of Morrison’s work after all he’s ostensibly the go-to guy for crazy science fiction, but in my opinion Morrison’s sci-fi has a metaphorical, allegorical, artistic and poetic strength that Lost’s can’t touch.

Or does it? After last night I’m a lot less sure and happily a lot less worried because I think there are some very clear pointers in that show about where we’re going and how we will ultimately be asked to view Lost’s labyrinthine plot, subplots and mythology, and I think the encounter with Rose and Bernard is the key.

To summarise the scene, Kate, Sawyer and Juliette stumble across Rose and Bernard living happily in the Jungle. The couple have been missing for the last three years (in show) and claim that they have “retired” from all the shenanigans that so preoccupy the stars of the show. When Juliette points out Jack is looking to set off a nuclear bomb and that they will almost certainly die if he isn’t stopped, Rose responds with, “there’s always something with you people”. And that’s the thing, there always is. They are always running around bumping into their own pain, always fighting and screaming and no-one ever knows what’s going on because everyone is too preoccupied with their own concerns to ever consider actually talking to anyone. The crucial point here is that Rose and Bernard are happy and content – the same cannot be said of their guests with their well worn psychological shackles.

Meanwhile Jack is indeed trying to detonate a nuke in an effort to wipe out the current reality and land him and the Losties back in their pre-Lost lives with no memory of anything that’s happened over the last 5 seasons. Whether Jack should or shouldn’t be doing this is a live issue but the show largely leaves it up to the audience to explore the moral and ethical dimensions of his intended course of action. At first this bothered rather a lot given that killing hundreds of people with atomic weaponry is a questionable act no matter how you cut it, but then I realised that Jack’s myopic worldview – that the myopic worldview of all of the central characters – was perhaps supposed to be under the microscope here. That we were just maybe supposed to be asking ourselves, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Because even if there was nothing morally troubling about Jack’s intentions and even if everything went to plan and he got what he wanted, he still would still find screwed up Jack Shepherd waiting for him back in LA.

At the end of the episode a whining tearful Ben asks Jacob “what about me?” and Jacob responds with a pointed “what about you?”. You could read this as callous or as an assessment of Ben’s character or you could add it together with the Rose and Bernard scene, with Jack’s demented plan, with all of the mental behaviour that goes on this island and ask yeah what about any of these people. The question here isn’t about time travel or course correction or monsters or why Ben does what he does or why anyone does anything or who the Others really are or why the statue, it’s about trying to find a better way to live that isn’t about being chained to one’s own ego. So chained that you’ll set off nuclear bombs (Jack), or kill everyone that gets in your way (Ben), or spend your life running away from everything that could make you happy (Kate), or conning people (Sawyer), or searching for status and validation regardless of the cost (Locke).

Lost is about free will vs determinism, yes, but all the fantastical components are just window dressing, in the final analysis just as barmy as all these demented humans running around the Island. Rose and Bernard haven’t just retired from all the crazy activities of the people, they’ve retired from the crazy activities of the Island, from all of it, and in the end I’m sure that’s where the show is headed.

What’s are the answers to the mysteries of the Island? I’m sure we’ll get some but when the show fades to black it might just be who bloody well cares!

Final shot prediction meme: The same one I’ve had in mind for years, Hurley walking across one of the island’s sun drenched beaches, and maybe, just maybe chatting with Charlie.